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3.5 years, though?

FYI, I'm not sure if it's part of the standard, but you can easily get a list of keywords for the search feature you mentioned http://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html (though it looks like Twitter is using a different/augmented set of keywords)

"easily" if all you care about is English (unless I missed links to translations).

(You didn't)

The dev clarified that this was a side project of theirs, which is why it took so long.

Discord (the chat application targeted at gamers) had it shipped much quicker and it works as well. They had it come with searching and skin colour setting too.

I'm imagining a product owner and a bunch other stake holders sitting in a meeting room adding a bunch of keywords to each emoji. Or just copying a list from somewhere on the Internet and filtering it (my bet would be on this).

EmojiOne already do this.